Pakistan university offers salaries, fee waiver to top postgraduate students

LAHORE: The Government College University (GCU) Lahore has decided to offer monthly salaries to postgraduate students to attract the brightest minds across the world from September 2021, ARY News reported on Friday.

The varsity administration announced to give monthly salaries to the top-performing postgraduate students, as well as fee waivers for the selected top MPhil and PhD scholars.

According to details, MPhil students will be offered Rs40,000 per month and a fee waiver, while PhD scholars will get Rs60,000 per month plus a fee waiver. The funds will be generated from additional seats in the undergraduate programmes.

GCU Vice-Chancellor (VC) Professor Dr Asghar Zaidi said, the postgraduate studentships will be highly competitive and the varsity will be replicating the model from the leading global universities which allocate a portion of their income from undergraduate programmes in order to strengthen postgraduate research.

He added the selected postgraduate scholars in GCU would be required to teach two courses per semester related to their research topic. “This will anchor them in their research and will bring in fresh ideas in teaching. I am glad our Academic Council has already approved this scheme,” he added.

While explaining the rationale, Prof Zaidi said, “It is unfortunate that some universities are minting money by offering self-supporting postgraduate degrees. They admit a large number of students irrespective of their competence to make the programme financially feasible.”

“MPhil and PhD are degrees of excellence and they cannot be offered for monetary benefits alone. Offering studentships to postgraduates is part of our recent drive to improve the teaching and research at GCU.”

The vice-chancellor said, “These studentships will not be limited to Pakistani students. GCU will attract good international students to create a global impact. No University can excel without attracting global talent.

“International students will come here with their knowledge, experiences, and work ethics which will help to improve our teaching and research standards.”